Another collection of recordings from Cuban tres guitarist Arsenio Rodriguez. These were made in Cuba between 1946-1950 and feature much the same line up as on "Como Se Goza En El Barrio" - most notably Rene Scull on vocals. More and more I am impressed with Arsenio Rodriguez and his output. Unlike so much of the newer Cuban releases of the Buena Vista Social Club ilk that are being released which are so clean as to be aseptic, these contain a beautiful rawness which is incomparable. The tres guitar itself, which has 3 pairs of unison tuned strings, has an odd always-semi-out-of-tune quality to it which makes my hair stand on end. Add to that beautifully melodic and rhythmically syncopated solo lines exchanged between tres, piano and trumpet, top it off with Rene Scull's ridiculous vibrato singing (which I must admit, took a while for me to warm up to, but is well worth the warmin) and you've got some kick ass Cuban music. No collection of Cuban music should be without a disk by Arsenio Rodriguez.
At last, reissued -- as a 'real' cd (not a cd-r) and cheaper too! This debut DJ/Rupture mix disc was a big hit here at Aquarius (and elsewhere too, apparently). We'd been getting the cd-r version on /Rupture's own Soot label direct from the man himself, but those are no longer available. Kid606 stepped in and signed DJ /Rupture to his Tigerbeat6 label, with a new /Rupture set called "Minesweeper Suite" due for release on August 27th. But, in advance of that, the Kid's other label, Violent Turd, has made the "Gold Teeth Thief" set available once again. Packaged in one of those plastic clamshell cases, with nought but a sticker for artwork, this remains a budget release, but a welcome one. It's also apparently a limited edition reissue, so if you missed it before, don't sleep on it now!! Here's our original glowing review, backed up by being named one of the top 50 best albums of the year by The Wire:
This is one of the best mix cds we've ever heard. And it's not about insane turntable skills, or about that 'isn't-it-weird-and-crazy-how-I've-juxtaposed-hip-hop-and-classic-rock' gimmicky stuff or about how famous or cool the DJ is (in fact, I bet you've never even heard of DJ /Rupture, an American living in Spain). It's about his choice of songs, and how smoothly and creatively they're mixed (live on 3 turntables). This cd is just an amazing and deft mix of dance hall (traditional -and- HARD ala DJ Scud etc.), hip hop, dub and electronica. Nothing fancy just 70 minutes and 43 tracks of some of our favorite shit: Missy Elliott, Nas, DJ Scud, Barrington Levy (a different track than his contribution to the amazing 400% Dynamite compilation, but you'll recognise his oh-so-familiar 'Woah Wooah.'), Nettle, Dead Prez, Bounty Killer, Kid 606, Venetian Snares, Luciano Berio, Shabba Ranks, Non Phixion, Wu-Tang Clan, Cannibal Ox, Djivan Gasparyan, Sub Dub, John Wall, Oval, Project Pat, Muslimgauze and even Paul Simon/Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Miriam Makeba (ending all smooth and pretty with no beats at all). Wow.
As promised, the new DJ Rupture set is here on Tigerbeat6 and it does not disappoint. As on his last release, Gold Teeth Thief, Rupture's strong points, and this can't be emphasized enough, are combined in his great taste in a variety of musics and his smMOOOOVve mixing skills. There's also nothing ironic about his choices of source material and, maybe more importantly, he is only too happy to oblige us with the names of the cuts that he's mixing (well, most of them, presumably the ones he got permission to use). So obliging is he, that he makes the point of including label names and even URLs where applicable. So if you're curious enough you can track down all the individual cuts for yourself (which is actually a fun task to perform because you can hear what Rupture has tweaked through pitch and EQ from the sources to achieve his goals.) Unlike Gold Teeth Thief, which starts off like a stick of dynamite, Minesweeper Suite -- as I suppose its name suggests -- catches one off-guard. It begins with a pleasant track from Nubian musician Mahmoud Fadl gradually mixed in with the smooth dub sounds of J-Boogie and the two slowly pitched up together until by six minutes into the CD, Rupture has got the tempo up to a grinding pulse with all manner of breakbeats, dancehall, arabic music and hip hop weaving seamlessly in and out of the mix. In all, Minesweeper Suite is a much more ambitious undertaking than Gold Teeth Thief in that the source material that Rupture pools together for this set seems to consitently come from a wide variety of music from around the globe. Where the "world music" filled second half of his Gold Teeth Thief set may have seemed the weaker part of that disc, here it seems Rupture has increased his skills enough to throw just about anything into the mix and have it sound as if it were meant to be completely natural. Among the music sampled are Foxy Brown, dancehall from Cutty Ranks, Sade, Nina Simone, Robert Flack, Dead Prez, Djivan Gasparyan, Kid606, Cex, DOnna Summer, Wax Poetic, Dat Politics, even Cul de Sac. Quite an experience.
Wow, a super special "nice price" deal on this longtime AQ fave. Great collaboration betwixt - His Lord Majesty - Mad Professor, and the mysterious Douggie Digital, circa 1995. Deep, pulsing dub underlayed with jungle beats. It works great, and if that ain't enough, there's a cameo appearance from - His Royal Nuttiness - Lee Scratch Perry!
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Pianist and arranger Anselmo Sacasas was one of the founding members of the renown Orchesta Casino De La Playa in 1937. In 1940 he moved to New York and formed his own group and, being one of the most amazing Cuban pinaists and arrangers, his orchestra became one of the most popular in the New York scene during throughout the decade. Featuring vocals from Octavio "Cuso" Mendoza and Ruben Gonzalez, these recordings were made in New York between 1945 and 1949.
'Get ready for drag-racing MAYHEM... Mayhem... mayhem... ummm do we really have to keep badgering them like this?' - Smithers OK, do not dismiss this as just a field recording of drag races (even though that is what it is). While the blasts of drag racing noise tear bi-aurally across this CD of field recordings from the Santa Pod Raceway in Podington, England on the site of an old American airbase, it is the constant ridiculous banter of the announcer whose barely audible / poorly-transmitted-through-a-crappy-speaker rants have captured the essence of the drag-racing. Certainly in the tradition of the 'Sounds of North American Frogs', 'The Conet Project', 'The Ghost Orchid', and 'One of One', this is brilliant.
Wow! Classic UK punk from 1977, and how! Satan's Rats came out of Evesham, Worcester, and among their claims to fame -- playing some of the earliest punk festivals -- they opened for the Sex Pistols and were so well received the audience demanded and encore (no small feat for a band playing for finnicky young punks waiting to see the genre's defining act.) This anthology, compiled by founding member / guitarist Steve Eagles includes everything the band ever recorded: six songs off their three singles and 14 demo tracks recorded between 1977 and 1979. The final four demo tracks are true gems, primitively recorded in a basement studio which had decayed so far by the time they were preserved in the digital realm they were riddled with drop outs. Damn, if there's nothing greater than those anomalies of analog recording indelibly archived in the digital world! I don't know why, but I always love hearing that. As far as the music of the Rats goes, it's just plain good old fashioned punk rock n' roll. Both the music and vocals sound a bit like Generation X, but maybe with the stick pulled out of Billy Idols ass a bit, or maybe a little like The Buzzcocks but pitched an octave or so down. On the six demos (never before released?) the band was working on in 1979 before vocalist Paul Rencher split the group (Steve Eagles went on to form The Photos aftwerwards) you can hear the Rats working towards extended rock jams -- like Ulster rockers Stiff Little Fingers -- with guitarist Eagles spreading his wings (pun maybe intended) and showing his guitar prowess. Includes repros of the original 7" sleeves, publicity photos of the group and a brief bio of all the important moments of the group's career penned by Eagles. Oh, and they do an irreverent cover of "Lady Is A Tramp"! What more can we say? Highly fucking recommended and shit!
Available on vinyl again! Here's our review of this Norwegian BM masterpiece from when we reviewed the cd version year and years ago:
One of the best, most influential, most perfectly grim and black, most brutal, and most importantly one of our -favorite- black metal records EVER! Easily the band's finest moment. When anyone asks us to recommend the most essential black metal releases EVER, this record vies for the top spot along with Burzum's Filosefem, Emperor's In The Nightside Eclipse, Mayhem's De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, Darkthrone's Transylvanian Hunger and Immortal's Blizzard Beasts. Pretty seriously daunting company for sure, but depending on our mood, a lot of the time Nemesis Divina easily bumps the others out of the top spot. From the all time classic "Mother North", quite possibly THE catchiest black metal songs ever, to the barely audible sscccching! of a sword being unsheathed about 3 minutes into the first song, to the fucking awesome band photos, this record is tough to beat. Any of the above mentioned records would be perfect introductions into the grim world of black metal, but somehow, Nemesis Divina seems like the perfect secret weapon, the record that even a non-metalhead would hear and be forced to bow down to the dark lord. So fucking great!
One of the best, most influential, most perfectly grim and black, most brutal, and most importantly one of our -favorite- black metal records EVER! Easily the bands finest moment. When anyone asks us to recommend the most essential black metal releases EVER, this record vies for the top spot along with Burzum's Filosefem, Emperor's In The Nightside Eclipse, Mayhem's De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, Darkthronee's Transylvanian Hunger and Immortal's Blizzard Beasts. Pretty seriously daunting company for sure, but depending on our mood, a lot of the time Nemesis Divina easily bumps the others out of the top spot. From the all time classic "Mother North", quite possibly THE catchiest black metal songs ever, to the barely audible sscccching! of a sword being unsheathed about 3 minutes into the first song, to the fucking awesome band photos, this record is tough to beat. Any of the above mentioned records would be perfect introductions into the grim world of black metal, but somehow, Nemesis Divina seems like the perfect secret weapon, the record that even a non-metalhead would hear and be forced to bow down to the dark lord. So fucking great!
Greensleeves finally gets off their duffs and reissues their classic Scientist dub LPs that have been floating around in various bootleg editions for ages now. Not only are they decent pressings, but they're pretty competitively priced to boot (the unsavory LP edition of "Wins The World Cup" that we had had in previously retailed for the same price as these.) Plus, you get the original artwork in all its heroic cartoon glory (possibly some of the greatest album cover art to come out of Jamaica, much of the time it seems people will buy them for cover alone.) With these handsome new editions there's really no reason to own the CD version anymore unless you no longer own a turntable (we do have all these Scientist albums available on CD as well for those who lack vinylability) and there's certainly no reason to waste good money on bootlegs. Let's hope that Greensleeves keeps these things in print for a while this time. The albums in this series are composed of tracks recorded by the Roots Radics band at Channel 1 between 1981 and 1982 which were later mixed by Scientist at King Tubby's.
The dubs on these LPs reside on the very minimal side of the dub spectrum. Not much in the way of additional tracking was done for these records aside from percussion. The rest of the crafting is done by the Scientist behind the mixing board chopping up the tracks, recklessly sliding faders and pouring tons of delay and reverb atop the mix.
Even though it was just a gimmicky way of doing a split LP by Greensleeves, I still find myself asking who the winner is of this faux boxing match between two of King Tubby's greatest proteges. There is no loser of course, but you can take this home and compare the pair's dubbing stlyles as they go through all ten rounds back to back.
Cover art note: features a drawing of the two fighters in a boxing ring loaded with speakers around its sides and sitting at their mixing consoles in each corner. The Scientist even has a bunson burner heating up some green liquid in a beaker atop his mixer.
Gambuh is the oldest surviving dramatic form in Bali (incorporating music, literature and dance), a remnant of the Hindu Javanese courts of 500 years ago, it followed those courts to Bali when the Mahapajit dynasty fell to Islam in the 15th century. With the
Few artists' music can guarantee to brighten your days and nights the way Atom Heart (and his numerous aliases) can. Any new release from this fella is received with a huge aQ grin! If you dug the recent Yellow Magic Fever tribute from the always deliriously delightful Senor Coconut and Los Negritos' Speed-Merengue Mega-Mix, you know what we're talking about and you definitely won't wanna miss these freshly reissued earlier Senor Coconut releases including this, his awesome Kraftwerk tribute! Even if you got 'em the first time around, heck, we're sure you know somebody who'd benefit from this festive treat!
Back in 2000, we had this to say about El Baile Aleman: Senor Coconut is actually the guy better known as techno/electronica artist Atom Heart. He's moved to Chile and gone all Latin and groovy on us. However, all the songs on this (high-) concept album are Kraftwerk covers! So this joins a long line of weird and wonderful tributes to Kraftwerk. Soon we'll be able to have a whole bin at Aquarius dedicated to such endeavors: the Balenescu Quartet one, the Terre Thaemlitz one, the one with all the Slovenian acts, the Japanese import one, the Miami Bass one, etc. etc. Anyways, so incredibly executed down to the tiniest detail, this one will sit at the top of the heap! Super duper fun.
Few artists' music can guarantee to brighten your days and nights the way Atom Heart (and his numerous aliases) can. Any new release from this fella is received with a huge aQ grin! If you dug the recent Yellow Magic Fever tribute from the always deliriously delightful Senor Coconut and Los Negritos' Speed-Merengue Mega-Mix, you know what we're talking about and you definitely won't wanna miss these freshly reissued earlier Senor Coconut releases including his awesome Kraftwerk tribute El Baile Aleman! Even if you got 'em the first time around, heck, we're sure you know somebody who'd benefit from this festive treat!
Back in 2000, we had this to say about Gran Baile Con Senor Coconut: Mambo-electronica-fuckery from German cum Chilean Atom Heart. Much more skittery and abrasive than his more recent Kraftwerk covers record, really innovative work that has more staying power without that gimmick. Think V/VM meets Stock, Hausen & Walkman, meets Rancho Relaxo All-Stars. Heavily entrenched in the drill & bass laptop / breakbeat damage employed by Aphex Twin and early Squarepusher, but using samples culled from the rich Cuban traditions of Cha Cha and Mambo. Highly recommended.
The return of one of the most fucked up rappers we know, whose last record was a highlight of the always-excellent WordSound label! Between songs like "Chunky Buds" and "Dope Man", Sensational's second album is much more of a proclamation of getting really stoned and staying really stoned for as long as possible. Somewhere in between all of this pot smoking, Sensational manages to somehow record a really great record of brittle, super slow hip hop and utterly mental words of wisdom mumbled-with-a-mouthful-of-marbles as opposed to rapped with any coherence. Needless to say, Sensational may very well be Aquarius' favourite rapper (yes, more so than Kool Keith). Recommended!
Former member of the Jungle Brothers goes solo, sounds like Wu-Tang with a head injury!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Miguel Matamoros formed both the Septeto (1928) and Conjunto (1942) much after he'd already aquired acclaim with his trio. With the Septeto he filled out the sound by adding trumpet (Jose Macias or Jose Quintero), clarinet (Francisco Repilado), bass (Felipe Torriente or Christobal Mendive), bongos (Pedro Mena or Agustin Gutierrez) and adding piano (Armando Beltran or Ramon Dorca) for the Conjunto. The repertoire remains unchanged with the increase in ensemble size and most of the recordings found here (made between 1928 and 1950) are still primarily the Cuban Son which Miguel Matamoros was probably the greatest propagator of.
When we were roommates a few years ago, Virgil used to come home dead tired from carpentering and construction all the whole day. There'd be paint on his jeans and crumbs of chalky sheetrock in his hair. He'd pop a beer, sit in our kitchen lit by only a bare bulb, and he'd play guitar, yowling in his crackly heart-tugging voice. Most of the time he was working out new Dieselhed songs -- he's an integral member of the San Francisco-via-Eureka band, who you should all know by now are one of my favorite bands in the world and it's simply criminal that they haven't been able to quit their day jobs yet cos they RULE. Anyway, I would never say it to his face but I think Virgil's pretty grade-A brilliant, and have always loved the rickety, stark 'kitchen versions' of Virgil's songs, and I hoped he'd record them. Wishes do come true. So lovely! Some of Virgil's lyrics: He had a big mouth of crooked teeth Like china leaning by the sink So clean they were almost blue So blue they were almost see through. She has a jacket she hangs outside Smoke sticks to the fake hide So fake you can almost see through So see through you wouldn't know what to do.
Ex-Dieselhed frontman and perennial Aquarius favorite Virgil Shaw returns at last with a new collection of songs. Virgil's songwriting is at the top of its form; painting vivid pictures, recollecting grainy memories, faded epics and otherwise expressing the most heart rending lyrics he's ever written. The melodic hooks are so kindly and accessible without deepening into sappiness -- a difficult feat to pull off but with Virg it seems effortless. In terms of musical accompaniment, Still Falling is perhaps the most lush and varied in its arrangements with horns, organs, pianos, oodles of percussion and even -- for a couple seconds between two tracks -- the remnants of the dixieland jazz band from the recycled tape that they used to record the album on. Along with regular Shaw cohorts Danny Heifetz and Atom Ellis (also ex-Dieselhed), Virgil is joined by a cadre of musicians including American Music Club's Mark Eitzel (who sings vocals on a couple tracks), percussionist Willie Winant and regular salts Marc Capelle (playing just about every keyboard invented to within an inch of its life), Jeff Palmer, Matt Hall and more. Eight new originals, a Terry Allen cover ("Wilderness of This World") and a version of Merle Haggard's "Sing Me Back Home".
Those who've been long time fans of Dieselhed are acutely aware of the limitations that the recording studio had in capturing the Dieselhed everyone knew and loved as a fantastic live band. The same, fortunately, does not apply to what Virgil has been doing since Dieselhed decided to call it quits. In fact, if anything, this newest album from Shaw and his back up band The Killer Views is closer to capturing the spirit of what Dieselhed was -- at least during their ballads -- than ever before. This is probably due in part to the presence of the above mentioned Dieselhed alumni. So nice!
We recently received an lp simply called "Thai Record". Hmmm, very mysterious we thought, so we threw it on, and were instantly smitten. At the same time, it sounded sort of familiar... but how could that be, what were the odds that some random Thai recording would just so happen to be one we had heard or already owned. It finally clicked, this was no mysterious "Thai Record", this was an old AQ favorite, renamed and pressed on vinyl. Not to infer that it's not mysterious, it most certainly is, it just so happens to be a mystery we had faced before. The record, titled Siamese Temple Ball, was one we had reviewed years ago and was always a steady seller, and for good reason, it's an amazing album. The lp was gone as quick as it came, but it reminded us, that many of you probably missed out on the Siamese Temple Ball cd when we first listed it waaaaaay back, so now here's your chance. A brief discussion of this musical mystery from our original review:
Not much information comes with this disk at all, on the shrink wrap there's a faux pidgen English description claiming: "Flight comes to Thailand in the Year of the Rat. Siamese Temple Ball provide the lilting soundtrack for a chemical journey. Schoolgirls dance bashfully for the expectant throng. Life continues at a comparatively slow pace away from the rigours of fierce sun-light." Which is followed by the (label's) description: "In the tradition of Sun City Girls, Ya Ho Wha 13, The Spacious Mind, Taj Mahal Travellers, Mu, Word of Life, Group 1850, and Ghost, Siamese Temple Ball give maximum pleasure for thirsty brains." Quite a roster of comparisons, the most fitting of which is definitely the Sun City Girls. So while we assume that this record was recorded by a group of precocious, dilettante, ethnomusicologist hipsters, we like to suspend our disbelief and imagine this to be a genuine Folkways-style field recording, as the recording certainly has a genuine field recording presence - a single stereo microphone in a good location. The music itself is a catchy and mesmerizing steady pulse of various and sundry percussion instruments (metal, wood, skin), hollers, yelps, and rococo melodic lines spun out by tinny electric guitars, xylophones, flutes and Khan (mouth organ.) And yes, it's quite good.
Excellent collection of dub from some of the best. Recorded in 1975, at the zenith of dub engineering technology by the master of the knobs and faders (and acknowledged inventor of dub) King Tubby. But no dub record would be anything without an excellent set of musicians to boot, and in this incarnation of the Skatalites you have a giant heaping tablespoon of them, including (but not limited to): Roland Alphonso, Tommy McCook, Ernest Ranglin, Ras Michael, Augustus Pablo and Jackie Mittoo. Lots of long, no hurry jams, with gobs of spring reverb, a smattering of tape echo, and pounding Nyabhinghi rhythms. So stoney that it's almost guaranteed to make you forget what you were doing if you listen to this disk long enough.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Steven R. Smith of local spacerockers Mirza. Ranges from simple spacious lo-fi instrumental to big prog jams. Very nice.
Any avid reader of the AQ list will be well aware that we've long been huge fans of Steven R. Smith, his solo records, his work in Mirza, Thuja, Hala Strana, all totally amazing. So we were super excited recently to find out that Mr. Smith had a stash of some long out of print titles. We took everything he had, which unfortunately wasn't a lot, so if you want to nab one of these, best be quick! Since these titles have been out of print for ages, once this last handful of these titles are gone, they are gone for good.
Here's what we had to say about this gorgeous ep when we first listed it way back when:
New, old material from AQ fave Steven R. Smith (Mirza & Thuja). Four covers done by Mr. Smith that were released previously only on vinyl, two from a now out of print 7" and two never before released tracks. If you've heard Steven R. Smith's other recordings you're probably aware that he excels in the art of whiskey soaked, tape saturated drone rock. His cover of Leonard Cohen's "I Tried To Leave You", which starts off the disk certainly testifies to that. All the best moments of the Dirty Three, but with the balls of the Velvet Underground and somehow wrapping into it all the garagey psychedelia of Six Organs of Admittance or Vibracathedral Orchestra. Along with the Cohen' track are covers of the Smiths ("Death of a Disco Dancer"), the Grateful Dead's old standby "Morning Due" (equally brilliantly liberated a la Einsturzende Neubauten's version) and a cover of Muzsikas' "Regen Volt, Soka Lesz." And, we might add, all done as instrumentals. For those of you who haven't heard his albums yet, this is a really great introduction to Smith's mysterious and romantic sonic world!
WE ONLY HAVE ABOUT A DOZEN COPIES IN STOCK! After that, this is gone forever!
Any avid reader of the AQ list will be well aware that we've long been huge fans of Steven R. Smith, his solo records, his work in Mirza, Thuja, Hala Strana, all totally amazing. So we were super excited recently to find out that Mr. Smith had a stash of some long out of print titles. We took everything he had, which unfortunately wasn't a lot, so if you want to nab one of these, best be quick! Since these titles have been out of print for ages, once this last handful of these titles are gone, they are gone for good.
Fifth (almost) full-length release by ex-local drone rocker Steven R. Smith (of Thuja and Mirza.) Right before the recording of Tableland, Steven invested in a brand new 8-track recording deck and "Tableland" could well be considered a christening of the new machine. It's probably important to note that the move from 4 tracks to 8 tracks does not equate with a move to overproduction. No, the lush and saturated qualities that are so indicative of Steven R. Smith's recordings are still here to envelope you like a warm wool blanket on a cold day. Five new instrumentals make up "Tableland" and Steven fills out his lonesome arrangements with reverb drenched guitars, bowed metal stringed instruments (possibly zithers?), swelling organs, bells, drums, piano and various other instruments resulting in grainy film scores for non-existent films. So totally gorgeous.
WE ONLY HAVE ABOUT 10 COPIES IN STOCK! After that, this is gone forever!
Arhoolie has finally got round to reissuing this fine bluegrass album (originally released in 1961), and with four additional tracks that weren't included on the original LP release. Though the group's name and the album's title imply a cajun infused bluegrass sound, in truth Jim Smoak's bluegrass is a lot closer to its Kentucky origins in sound than Louisiana (Smoak himself was born and raised in South Carolina.) What the tracks lack in the traditional gospel derived vocal harmonization is made up in spades with variations on traditional old-timey and good humored numbers like "Kissin' Cousins", "Old Dan Tucker" ("...was a fine old man, washed his face in a frying pan"), "Whoah, Mule, Woah" and more. I wouldn't typify this as solemn or high-lonesome, but rather high powered and light hearted bluegrass with a strong connection to the early string band and minstrelsy of J.E. Mainer's Mountaineers or Gid Tanner's Skillet Lickers. Jim Smoak was one hell of a banjo player who played not only in Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys in the early fifties, but was hired by Earl Scruggs to play for Hylo Brown, who Earl was managing at the time. And there's not a better pair of personal recommendations for a bluegrass banjo player to have on his resume than that. And Smoak's playing, though certainly informed by Scrugg's innovative style was by no means a mere copy. The old-timey / bluegrass blend that was a big part of the Louisiana Honeydrippers' sound was a perfect place for Jim Smoak's playing style which utilized a faux-clawhammer picking for rhythm backup when not soloing, with some of the strongest Scruggs' style picking you're likely ever to hear and emphasized with heavy downstroke thumb strumming. Some of the melodies Smoak brings out to the fore from his arpeggios seem almost certain to break the strings right off the banjo, and yet his solos sound smooth as silk, not clunky and overdone. At times it's like listening to a bluegrass banjo player on crystal meth.
This took a while to grow on us but everytime we listen to it someone goes "Wow." Elizabeth Solex is from the Netherlands where she owns a record/thrift store or something and thus has a formidable array of sources from which to sample. She also adds keyboards to the mix and has got a great ear for creating intensity and buildup, not just trip hop groove, and her lilting voice holds it all together. A pleasant surprise. For fans of PJ Harvey, Beth Orton. Also -- Solex is the first Matador artist in over five years to be signed from an unsolicited demo tape.
It's hard to believe this is real. In fact, it took a lot to convince Andee, who was sure this was some Gregg Turkington prank.
But the thing that really puts CUT on the map for us is their way of conducting their religious services, and the fact that someone managed to tape it. The tapes of this service have been floating around for years already. Those of you familiar with Negativland's 1989 album "Escape From Noise" will already be familiar with an excerpt of one of the tracks on this album, as they used it for the track "Michael Jackson", and Steve Fisk has been using these tapes for years as well. This record features live recordings of Clare Prophet 'speaking' out against the evils of rock music. She sounds perfectly normal as she introduces her 'psalms' or 'songs' or 'speeches' or whatever they are. But when she gets going, it's amazing. And so goddamn funny. Her rapid fire high pitched testifying sounds a bit like an insane mix of an auctioneer, a yodeller, the guy who sings the directions at a square dance, Neil Hamburger huffing helium, variations of baseball's 'hey batter batter' chant only faster. It's like that sound you make when you sort of hum/breathe out and move your finger up and down between your lips making a sort of 'bebubebubebubebubebubebubebubebu' sound. It's one of the most amazing things we've ever heard! A must for all cult fanatics, new age withdrawal victims, seekers of the truly strange, and fans of extended vocal techniques. Ever so highly recommended!
First "The Conet Project", now this. Well, okay, this isn't spooky like those shortwave spy broadcasts, but the sounds these frogs make have some similar qualities to the morse code or "noise stations", and like The Conet Project is both bizarre and fascinating. The 92 tracks of the croaks, trills, screams, mating calls, and other forms of amphibian vocalisations were conceived, narrated, and documented by Charles M. Bogart. Travelling from the far reaches of Alaska to the deserts of Arizona to the foothills of Tennessee, Mr. Bogart presents a labor of love in selecting these field recordings and their descriptions. The dry delivery of Mr. Bogart's indexical texts is unnervingly and humorously dissimilar to these frogs calls. Just like The Conet Project's unintentional (?) aural terror, The Sound of North American Frogs features a wide variety of drones and clicks that could be from some RLW or Pierre Henry experiment with tape loops. So highly recommended that several unnamed staff members of AQ have been over heard "singing" along with the Pig Frog and the Carpenter Frog.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Three new songs from the amazing Mr. Linkous ("Waiting For Nothing," "Happy Place," & "My Yoke Is Heavy"), plus three live versions of songs off the first two albums.
Originally released in 1998, and now available on vinyl again (and still available on cd), Good Morning Spider was record number 2 from the late Mark Linkous and band, following their debut, Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot. The interesting thing about GMS, is that it was a huge stylistic and sonic shift for the band, much more somber and introspective that its predecessor, in part, most assume, because just before the recording of GMS, Linkous overdosed in a London hotel room, collapsed and was clinically dead for several minutes, he also spent the next few months in a wheelchair after a surgery that threatened to keep him in that chair forever. But if that particular black cloud did indeed have a silver lining, it's the absolutely inspired, ultra personal, intimate and heart wrenching beauty that is Good Morning Spider. While the record still strikes a precarious balance between rambunctious rocking and more darkly balladic introspection, the scales seem to be tipping toward delicate crystalline beauty, dark, hushed, whispery, haunting and so lovely. But even the more rocking numbers are infused with some serious pathos, and of course plenty of melancholy and heartbreak.
The whole record is a marvel, gorgeously and idiosyncratically produced, lots of crackle, and buzz, and processed vocals, effected instrumentation, strings, lush twang flecked indie rock one second, dreamy about-to-collapse balladry the next, fragmented perfect pop the next. The record begins with the brief blast of "Pig", is a serious chunk of incendiary crunch, but so rife with impossibly hooky melodies, and some super dramatic layered vocals, not to mention plenty of twisted sounds and atmosphere. And then it's all dialed WAY down, "Painbirds" is a lilting bit of sweetly sorrowful shuffling slowcore, "Saint Mary" is a hushed bit of slo-mo Appalachian pop, Linkous' fragile vox drifting over a simple strum, but it is so much more than the sum of its parts. "Sick Of Goodbyes" is another more rocking track, but that rocking squall is brief, as the record shifts back into slow sorrowful drift.
One of our favorite tracks has to be "Chaos Of The Galaxy / Happy Man", which begins as a whirling FX flecked bit of organ warble, mysterious voices, ethereal and dreamlike, a brief intro to what sounds like bad radio reception, the song "Happy Man" struggling to be heard through the static and hiss, even cutting out completely at points, until finally kicking in, and it's such a perfect pop song, with an incredible hook, and some super intense vocals, and killer guitar playing, and then once again, the record slips back into darkness, and for the remainder of the record, slips seamlessly between angstful distorted jangly crunch and shimmery drifty introspection. So good.
Anyone who loves stuff like Vic Chestnut, Lambchop, Neutral Milk Hotel, Palace/Will Oldham/Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Songs:Ohia and the like, who somehow missed out on Good Morning Spider, here's another chance...
Includes a digital download card!
Hooray! AQ all-time fave Mark Linkous returns at last with a brand new Sparklehorse album and we are happy to report that he, once again, does not disappoint. Mr. Linkous has that innate ability to write incredibly infectious pop songs with teeth -- never
For those of you who aren't familiar with Sparklehorse, Linkous' aesthetic weaves delicate, about-to-crack vocals, gently strummed guitars, and all sorts of bizarre studio trickery (a wonderful amalgamation of lo-fi home recording and ultra-lush top dollar multi-track wizardry) to make his records SOUND so great. But it's the songs that make the biggest impression. Whether it's a super distorted rollicking rocker, a barely-there ghost of a melody, or a heart wrenching country ballad, every song, at its core, is a perfect, perfect pop song. Catchy as hell, but not immediately -- more a sort of insidious, slowly spreading, like a virus beautiful, but beautifully miserable as well. And the lyrics too are practically perfect. Simple but astonishing in their depth. Clever and brutally soulful, without being melodramatic or overwrought.
The record that started it all. 'It' in this case being our neverending, undying love for Mark Linkous and the desperately beautiful Sparklehorse.
This is Sparklehorse's first album, finally available again on cd after being shamefully out of print for way too long. Certainly a must for anyone who's got both Good Morning Spider and It's A Wonderful Life, but also a great place to start for those who've yet to discover the wonderful musical realm of Mark Linkous. From the slow singing-right-in-your-ear intimate "Spirit Ditch" to the rockin' summer sing-a-long "Rainmaker" to the sort-of-hit "Someday I will Treat You Good", each tune that Linkous writes is a gem: lush ballads, twangy 'No Depression' pop and experimental musical miniatures. Though at times comparisons to Camper Van Beethoven sans art school pretensions are fitting, fans of Uncle Tupelo, Palace, Vic Chesnutt, Lambchop, Wisdom of Harry and great pop in general should all take heed and check out Sparklehorse. You won't be sorry.
The Squarepusher collection features all of the tracks from the "Big Loada" ep, the "Port Rhombus" ep, half of the "Vic Acid" ep (not the tracks also on "Hard Normal Daddy"), and a kick ass video as a cd-rom bonus. To repeat: KICK ASS VIDEO -- a minature movie in fact -- fully worth the price of the disc itself, although if you don't have "Port Rhombus" etc. this entire package is pretty essential anyway.
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Jazzy jungle with really freaky rhythms programmed by Tom Jenkinson a.k.a. Squarepusher, current darling of the idm-list (idm, you know -- what they insist on calling INTELLIGENT DANCE MUSIC). Smooth yet wacked. Challenging not boring. If you like Wagonchrist/Plug/Luke Vibert then this will meet your high standards. Also usually available: the full length, Feed Me Weird Things. Both English imports.
Though most bluegrass artists might only throw in one or two token religious numbers when they put together a record, or devote one album to such material, there can be no doubt that religion informs bluegrass music. Like the Monroe, Louvin or Osborne
So lovely! This is a reissue of a '60s Indonesian guitar pop record that Warren Defever of His Name is Alive stumbled upon at the Salvation Army. Attempts to locate the members of The Steps proved unsuccessful, so he reissued it himself on the Time Stereo label (for folks who care, it�s a cd-r). Pastoral instrumentals with a classic, rounded 60s guitar tone. Everytime we play this in the store, someone buys it! -- Yes, it�s that pretty and that unusual. Highly recommended!
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At last, we've got the new album from these witty British sampling artists. Possibly their best yet, truly the finest in dadaist electronica! Less overt spot-the-sample action than before. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED for fans of electronica as well as spacerock.
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Stock, Hausen & Walkman's second volume of organ transplants is filled with lots and lots of organs. And we don't mean that in an eviscerated Hermann Nitsch kind of way... well sort of. The Manchester outfit has liberally spiked their lysergic electronica grooves with any form of organ deemed ripe for appropriation. Church pipe organs, Farfisas, hand-crank organs, Hammond organs, and tons more! Like records by fellow plunderphonists People Like Us, "Organ Transplants 2" is full of seemingly obvious musical quotations, tweaked just beyond the point of recognition. Beyond the brain-teasing / tongue-twisting frustration in trying to pinpoint the references (we're damn sure Aavikko pops up at the end of the record), this is wonderful collection of cool weirdness.
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Really nice downtempo sample-heavy trickery that grooves along, subtly minding its own business (read: doesn't hit you over the head), much like the recent Tipsy and Sukia records. And with a name like Stock, Hausen, and Walkman, you know they're on the right track. Highly recommended.
To reiterate - "And then I had a dream: I heard and saw the four string players in four helicopters flying in the air and playing. At the same time I saw people on the ground seated in an audio-visual hall, others were standing outdoors on a large public plaza. In front of them, four towers of television screens and loudspeakers had been set up: at the left, half-left, half-right, right. At each of the four positions one of the four string players could be heard and seen in close-up. Most of the time, the string players played tremoli which blended so well with the timbres and the rhythms of the rotor blades that the helicopters sounded like musical instruments. When I woke up, I strongly felt that something had been communicated to me which I never would have thought of on my own. I did not tell anyone anything about it. Since I did not, after the dream, have any time to compose, I wrote and drew several sketches and -- from the super formula -- developed the Helicopter String Quartet as the third scene of Wednesday from Light, the cycle of music dramas which I have been composing since 1977. Only in 1992/93 did I find the peace to compose the Helicopter String Quartet, and especially to made the fair copy of the colored score." -Karlheinz Stockhausen.
At the beginning of 2000, we got in the Arditti String Quartet version of this score, which featured the ensemble in a studio overdubbing their performance with canned helicopters. If you're gonna have a great conceptual idea, do it right. Stockhausen knew that and released the world premier performance of the piece with his studio mix-down of the previously mentioned Arditti String Quartet recording.
The first two incarnations of the composition "Hymnen" (1966 - 1967) are found on 4cds. The first being 4-track stereophonic recordings of elektronische musik in which shortwave radio transmissions of international gibberish begin to evolve into a strict directional score from which bursts national anthems from Germany, Switzerland, America, Spain, Russia, and Africa. Stockhausen elaborates on the compositional metaphors both aurally and conceptually in a massive 200 page book both in English and German. The second incarnation is a reworking of the electronic score accompanied by soloists on piano, tam-tam, electric viola, electronium, filters, and potentiometers.
"Musik Im Bauch" was composed in 1975 for music box and percussion. Originally, "Tierkries" was composed for a solo instrument to be accompanied by a chordal instrument. On this recording, Stockhausen has arranged "Tierkries" for 12 music boxes - each with its own melody representing a character of the Zodiac. The results are quite beautiful.
AQ's Byram Abbott has resigned himself to the fate that he must own one of Stockhausen's limited edition music boxes which were prominently featured in the "Tierkreis" performance. This "70th Birthday Edition" is limited to 40 music boxes for each of the star signs. The melodies are encased in a light-colored natural wood box measuring 17.7 x 12.1 cm. The notes of the melody are silkscreened onto the lid of each of the musicbox. Support the Stockhausen drug habit, buy a music box!
In addition to crafting utterly gorgeous breathtaking minimal pop ambience as Gas, Wolfgang Voigt was also responsible for some of the most influential minimal techno of the last twenty years, as Mike Ink, M:I:5 and a handful of other monickers. It's hard for us sometimes to describe techno music, and to define just what it is that makes us love one techno record and hate another, but this comp is wall to wall genius. Out of print since 2000, this comp is finally available again, collecting some of the best 12"s Voigt released in the nineties, as well as tacking on a handful of bonus tracks, every one a spare skeletal dubbed out groovescape of simple bubbly beats, minimal percussive thumps and beeps, everything tight and clipped, hypnotic and mesmerizing, futuristic dancefloor perfection, managing to swing, within fairly rigid arrangements. Pretty much every band on Kompakt, whether they know it or not, owe everything to this man, and these tracks right here.
Each track is named for a color, although it's unclear how those tracks reflect the colors they're named for, or if it's just a simple way of codifying the various grooves, either way, it does reflect the simple spare and minimal vibe of the sounds, the layout, the whole concept. It's hard to imagine people dancing to this, although we know they do, for us though, this is perfect chill out music, the beats bouncy but muted, the basslines barely there, usually just a streak or a brief thrum, the tracks hardly shift over the course of their 7-10 minutes, the timbre subtly changing, maybe another little skitter gets tossed into the mix, it hardly matters, as these songs start out pretty much perfect, and only get more perfect as they go on. Every track here could get locked into an endless loop, and we'd happily nod off, drift off, forever, letting the beats and austere ambience just wash over us.
Some of these tracks are almost 20 years old and still sound totally fresh, and even a bit futuristic, and the perfect soundtrack for some space age dinner party or some late night chill out sesh in a bad ass satellite bachelor pad slowly orbiting the Earth.
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Disc one is their first, classic album, and the limited edition disc two features two live shows (CBGB's '77 and "23 Minutes Over Brussels").
"High Asia Lo-Pacific" comprise volumes 9 and 10 of the Sun City Girls' Carnival Folklore Resurrection series. High Asia, disc one, finds the Girls returning to their quasi-ethno folk which they seem to do so well. Using primarily stringed instruments --
Volume 7 in the Carnival Folklore Resurrection series, and all four of Aquarius' Sun City Girls heads give it the thumbs up. According to the liner notes the Sun City Girls originally made 50 cassettes of "Libyan Dream" and dropped them off in cassette
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Six discs into the Sun City Girls' rather indulgent "Carnival Folklore Resurrection" series and even the most fannish of fans could be forgiven for starting not to care. So, in accordance with their contrary ways, leave it to the SCGs to spring a surprise: this one is probably the best yet in the series, an actual collection of pseudo ethnic psychedelic "pop" songs mixed with mysterious field recordings, both providing much evocative, "exotic" ambience. So, if the messy spazzy skronk of the live stuff that comprises a lot of the first five discs in the CFR series turned you off, you should give 'em another chance with this one.
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Second volume in SCG's "Carnival Folklore Resurrection" series, The Dreamy Draw is a vast improvement over the first. Similar to Vol. 1, it's a semi-improvised live performance (this time Seattle in May of 1998), but this is executed with a greater degree of savvy, on the level that one would expect from a group as seasoned as the Sun City Girls (rather than the pedestrian stoned-in-college basement "jam session" of volume one.) The performances here are soaked with meandering piano playing pseudo-East Asian pentatonic ditties along with the various parts and pieces of gamelan that the Girls have picked up in their travels.
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Reissued once again on cd, Torch... is most often referred to as the best SCG album; a good place to start.
